Super Turrican 2 Review

The final game in Factor 5's action/platforming series takes a bit of a turn away from the action and platforming.

Factor 5 is a name well known among Nintendo fans, most of whom still recall the greatness of the developer's Star Wars:Rogue Squadron games from the past two hardware generations. And, earlier this year, Nintendo reintroduced an earlier era of the studio's work to today's audience by releasing two of the company's 16-bit Turrican titles to the Wii's Virtual Console. Super Turrican came first, an action/platformer from the Super NES that impressed with its focused gameplay and incredible soundtrack. Mega Turrican was next, an effort from SEGA's Genesis that wasn't quite as explosive as its predecessor but still managed to make a name for itself too. And now the third installment is upon us. After a breather of a few months, Super Turrican 2 has arrived.

Like the other Turricans to come before it, Super Turrican 2 is a side-scrolling action/platformer that puts you in the role of a heavily armed super soldier. Equipped with a wide variety of guns, bombs and mobility-assisting gadgets, your fighter is a force to be reckoned with as he blasts his way through the ranks of the alien foes who oppose him. But unlike Super Turrican and Mega Turrican, this installment shifts gears fairly frequently into other styles of action, some of them changing the perspective of the experience entirely.

It's all about the vehicles. Super Turrican 2 is still primarily a side-scroller, but the focus in this design seems to be placed more fully on the alternate, interspersed vehicle-riding levels that show up after every few stages. You'll see it very early on, as the game's first stage includes a sequence where your soldier hops into a six-wheeled desert dune buggy to blast through miles' worth of arid, sandy terrain. And then, later, you'll discover the game's motorcycle and jetski sequences.

Beware, the swirling vortex of Mode 7 doom!

The game takes advantage of the SNES hardware's Mode 7 capabilities to move the camera "behind" your soldier as he races into the screen, as in other Mode 7-powered games of the same era like Super Mario Kart or Pilotwings. The driving stages offer a mix of obstacle-dodging and enemy blasting, as you duck and weave through energy barriers and fend off foes trying to crash headfirst into you.

The vehicles are welcome change of pace if you've played a lot of the Turrican games. But, if Super Turrican 2 is the only one in the series you've experienced, then you're unfortunately going to be getting a lesser sense of the franchise all around -- because with the focus drawn away from the side-scrolling action, what side-scrolling action you do get feels a little off.

As an example, both Super Turrican and Mega Turrican had secondary weapons that defined the feel of their action stages. One introduced the freeze beam that stunned enemies, while the other offered a grappling hook for increased mobility. Super Turrican 2 has both, which makes it feel like less its own experience than just a mash-up of the previous titles' highlights.

It also loses a lot of the non-linearity that made exploring Super Turrican 1's open-ended stages fun, instead going for a more basic and straightforward "run to the right while shooting" levels. And comparison doesn't help this follow-up in the area of audio either, as the first Super Turrican had one of the best soundtracks on the Super Nintendo. It's not easily topped, even by this sequel.

The Verdict

All of that's not to say that Super Turrican 2 fails to deliver in the side-
scrolling action department -- far from it. What's here is still solid and
satisfying. It's just a little unfocused, and so it's not quite as
outstanding an individual game as its SNES predecessor. If you've
played both of the previous Turrican adventures on the Virtual
Console, then definitely consider investing an additional 800 Wii Points
to see how the series wrapped up here in the 16-bit era. But if you
haven't yet spent time with any of them, start at the beginning -- grab
the first Super Turrican to begin with, then continue on to the sequels
if you like what you find there.